ATI Evergreen 3D Code May Soon Go Into Gallium3D

[V!NCENT]

About the reverse engineering part; please don't do it. AMD puts great effort into open source and if anyone screws them over then gues what we'll lose.

As for the 3D part; Linux has more marketshare on the desktop then 3D has worldwide in any market. As long as OpenGL 2.1 doesn't even work, why the fsck even bothering about 3D movies?! There isn't even accelerated _video_ yet!

[droidhacker]

About the reverse engineering part; please don't do it. AMD puts great effort into open source and if anyone screws them over then gues what we'll lose.

How would reverse engineering it "screw anyone over"? The problem isn't that they don't want UVD to be implemented in the open source drivers, the problem is that they don't have the legal go-ahead to release the required DOCUMENTATION. If the functions can be figured out WITHOUT AMD DOCUMENTATION, this would NOT be screwing anyone over.

[bridgman]

Actually, no. The problem is that we don't want information in public that could impact our ability to ship a robust DRM implementation on other OSes. It doesn't make a whit of difference whether that information is published or reverse engineered. If you want a bad analogy (hey, I'm out of coffee) it's like being shot in the foot. It's a Bad Thing whether you do it or someone else does it, but you still don't want to do it yourself

[pingufunkybeat]

So, reverse-engineering Nvidia's decoding hardware would be a better thing?

Cause then, you could release the documentation anyway, as all the competitors' decoding is already out in the open.

[rohcQaH]

So, reverse-engineering Nvidia's decoding hardware would be a better thing?

sure, if you want to screw nvidia and possibly get into a bit of a lawsuit, go ahead

Cause then, you could release the documentation anyway, as all the competitors' decoding is already out in the open.

doesn't matter if the copy protection is broken. It already is (blueray movies CAN be ripped and copied), but that doesn't lift the contractual obligations of the GPU vendors.
The MPAA (or whoever makes those contracts) isn't going to say "Oh well, copy protection was a bad idea anyway. You may now freely copy our movies on all platforms. Have fun!"

[pingufunkybeat]

doesn't matter if the copy protection is broken. It already is (blueray movies CAN be ripped and copied), but that doesn't lift the contractual obligations of the GPU vendors.
The MPAA (or whoever makes those contracts) isn't going to say "Oh well, copy protection was a bad idea anyway. You may now freely copy our movies on all platforms. Have fun!"

No, but if it's broken on all GPU platforms equally, then they would have to end BluRay and DVD playback on all PCs, and they don't want to do this.

In short, they might screw either ATi or Nvidia, but not both. They would be shooting themselves in the foot.

[TomcaT-SdB]

Actually, I'm just asking if stereo support is accounted for, so that supporting it won't cause major disruption if/when the devs can get around to it. Stereo support is _part_ of OpenGL (google: OpenGL Quad Buffer stereo) anyway. I'm not suggesting that they drop any current activities or anything of the sort... It's just a question / concern. That's all.

[droidhacker]

we don't want information in public that could impact our ability to ship a robust DRM implementation on other OSes.

Bah! Don't give me that.... I can tell by the things that you say that you have an unscratchable itch to give out all the restricted super-secret DRM stuff that you can possibly get your hands on -- free to the world, however, I know that you're not going to because we both know that you are far more useful out of jail than letting the DRM out and spending decades in lockup.

If completely reversed, I know that you'd secretly be cheering. Everyone would.

[rohcQaH]

Bah! Don't give me that.... I can tell by the things that you say that you have an unscratchable itch to give out all the restricted super-secret DRM stuff that you can possibly get your hands on -- free to the world, however, I know that you're not going to because we both know that you are far more useful out of jail than letting the DRM out and spending decades in lockup.

If completely reversed, I know that you'd secretly be cheering. Everyone would.

uhm, what?

When jail time is an option, you'd think he'd have different issues to contemplate than his "usefulness" to whatever cause.

Also remember that overseeing the OSS-drivers is only half of bridgman's job. He's also responsible for some unspecified things related to that DRM stuff he likes to talk about so often (what a coincidence ).
So, should someone break their DRM, guess who'll have to pick up the pieces? I wouldn't assume he'd be too happy about that.


last but not least, RE'ing their DRM would change a lot. Ok, you can watch your videos GPU accelerated for a while. But even if bridgman manages to release both AMD's and NVIDIAs DRM, it'll cost both companies money, and guess where budget cuts hit first? Maybe some OSS effort which doesn't have a measurable ROI anyway? And one way or another, the MPAA is going to react, and that rarely turns out well for their customers.


The root cause we'd all like to see destroyed is a totally different one. DRM is just a symptom.

[V!NCENT]

If the _AMD_ implementation of the DRM was cracked then pirates would only laugh and jawn (ripped versions are on the web anyway) and a legeon of angry FLOSS supporters would go after the cracker with burning torches for making AMD stop giving out documentation and working drivers, me included.

I'm serious.